MEAN vs LAMP Stack – All You Need to Know

Are you still confused about which stack can be ideal for your website development startup? Well, then believe us that you’re not alone in experiencing such a dilemma as the mean stack vs lamp stack argument has been there for some time now. When it comes to web development or creating the most robust web applications, the server-side infrastructure you choose does matter and so does the technology and code that you can run on them which makes choosing between MEAN and LAMP a difficult task.

Well, to help you out from such a dilemma, we at 4waytechnologies have come up with a quick comparison between the two platforms that can help you out in making the right decision. So, let’s delve deeper into the key capabilities and major mean and lamp stack differences here.

Differences Between MEAN & LAMP Stack

Following the most important differences between MEAN & LAMP stack.

Operating system

The operating system plays a crucial role in the mean stack vs lamp stack comparison. While in LAMP the OS is restricted only to the variants of Linux; MEAN has no such restrictions as any operating system capable of running Node.js, is good to go with MEAN stack.

Database

In LAMP stack, the RDBMS or relational database management system that is used is MySQL which is a rather conventional database system. However, in MEAN stack, a cross-platform document-oriented database system is used named MongoDB. This NoSQL database of MEAN stack not only provides power and simplicity but also makes the data integration process a lot easier and faster.

Programming language

Another one of the major mean and lamp stack differences is that the programming language they use. While in MEAN stack, the developers have to write both the server-side and client-side code in JavaScript; in LAMP stack the developers get different language options, such as PHP or Perl or even Python.

Cost

Both mean and lamp stack are open source platforms. But, while on the one hand, MEAN is super cheaper to operate and doesn’t require separate specialists for backend and frontend; LAMP gets costlier as different specialists are required for backend and frontend.

Web server

While LAMP stack has Apache as its web server component; MEAN stack depends on a web server provided by NODE.js. Yes, it’s true that Apache is more mature and robust than that of Node.js; but there’s also no denying that Node.js is lightweight, modern and offers non-blocking event-based web server, which boosts the performance of an application by making the concurrency of the HTTP requests a lot easier.

Data flow and presentation

Do you know that in LAMP stack the programmers need to write additional codes for web page control flow and presentation in Perl or PHP or Python? However, in MEAN stack it is the Express.js that acts as the controller layer while Angular.js handles the data presentations, which is also considered to be one of the major benefits of MEAN stack.

Remember, both mean and lamp stack has their own advantages and disadvantages. While the Mean stack has become instantly popular among the web developers, Lamp stack is more mature than the other. But there’s no denying the fact that the benefits of MEAN stack are way more than that of Lamp stack. And in the end, what matters is the users’ experience with a website or a web application, which certainly becomes more flexible with Mean stack.